The Scoop

As the industry continues to cope with fallout from the implosion of Three Arrows Capital, July has been a brutal month for crypto lenders, with both Voyager Digital and Celsius declaring bankruptcy, and other prominent lenders including Genesis, BlockFi and Blockchain.com incurring severe losses.In the case of Celsius — which is now reporting a $1.2 billion hole in its balance sheet — retail investors have a long road to recovering any of the crypto they deposited in the platform.In this episode of The Scoop, Domain Money founder and CEO Adam Dell walks through some of the fatal mistakes made by the recently collapsed crypto lenders and explains what a responsible approach to portfolio management looks like in the digital asset space.In contrast to the way Celsius allegedly deployed users' funds into levered strategies, Dell says it is important that Domain Money remains market neutral:"We don't take balance sheet risk. And so many of the entities you mentioned were using their clients' funds to basically take levered positions in the market."Domain Money is also looking to differentiate itself through quality portfolio managers. Dell has brought in teams from Goldman Sachs and Bridgewater to help construct and manage portfolios in the hope that veterans from traditional finance will be able to use their experience to manage the volatility of the crypto market.While the contagion stemming from Three Arrows Capital and rampant global inflation have caused crypto prices to plummet, Dell says this is healthy in the long-run: "I'm a little bit conflicted in that I certainly want all of our investors to have positive returns in any timeframe, but I also think this is, in the long-term, a very good thing for this industry to go through to weed out the bad actors, to weed out the momentum and meme-focused investors, and have a set of investments thrive and grow over time that are solving real world problems."Episode 64 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block's Frank Chaparro and Adam Dell, founder and CEO of Domain Money.Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblockcrypto.com.This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Chainalysis & IWC SchaffhausenAbout ChainalysisChainalysis is the leading blockchain data platform. We provide data, software, services, and research to government agencies, exchanges, financial institutions, and insurance and cybersecurity companies in over 60 countries. Backed by Accel, Addition, Benchmark, Coatue, Paradigm, Ribbit, and other leading firms in venture capital, Chainalysis builds trust in blockchains to promote more financial freedom with less risk. For more information, visit www.chainalysis.com.About IWC SchaffhausenIWC Schaffhausen is a Swiss luxury watch manufacturer based in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. Known for its unique engineering approach to watchmaking, IWC combines the best of human craftsmanship and creativity with cutting-edge technology and processes. With collections like the Portugieser and the Pilot’s Watches, the brand covers the whole spectrum from elegant timepieces to sports watches. For more information, visit IWC.com

 No matter the blockchain, individual blocks are limited in the amount of information they can hold; so when blockspace becomes limited, transaction fees increase.As Ava Labs COO Kevin Sekniqi puts it: “Chains are only cheap as long as the blockspace has not been filled up completely — once blockspace gets filled up completely, it becomes expensive.”In this episode of the Scoop, Sekniqi explains how Avalanche — the proof-of-stake blockchain Ava Labs launched back in September 2020 — utilizes ‘subnets’ to tackle the problem of blockchain scalability, and how subnets compare to other scaling solutions.As Sekniqi explains, existing validators of the Avalanche blockchain are able to deploy new subnets, and choose the rules of how they operate:“The simplest way to describe subnets… is a subset of the Avalanche validators coming together and agreeing to do something.”For example, the validators of a new subnet could choose to optimize the specifications of the new chain for a specific application, or validators could choose to require users to undergo KYC before interacting with the new subnet.Whereas an Avalanche subnet could theoretically be run with just a single validator, popular scaling solutions on Ethereum rely on the entire validator set of the base chain to process transactions.Sekniqi argues that this approach is likely unnecessary, and creates “extreme overhead that you don’t really want.”Instead, Sekniqi believes the number of validators securing a chain should scale organically alongside its value:“​​If there's a lot of activity and it truly is a very valuable chain, more and more people will start validating that chain because there are incentives… and so [security] scales up as the value is built upon it.”Episode 63 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded live at The Block headquarters in New York with The Block's Frank Chaparro and Kevin Seqniki, COO of Ava Labs.Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblockcrypto.com.This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Chainalysis & IWC SchaffhausenAbout ChainalysisChainalysis is the leading blockchain data platform. We provide data, software, services, and research to government agencies, exchanges, financial institutions, and insurance and cybersecurity companies in over 60 countries. Backed by Accel, Addition, Benchmark, Coatue, Paradigm, Ribbit, and other leading firms in venture capital, Chainalysis builds trust in blockchains to promote more financial freedom with less risk. For more information, visit www.chainalysis.com.About IWC SchaffhausenIWC Schaffhausen is a Swiss luxury watch manufacturer based in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. Known for its unique engineering approach to watchmaking, IWC combines the best of human craftsmanship and creativity with cutting-edge technology and processes. With collections like the Portugieser and the Pilot’s Watches, the brand covers the whole spectrum from elegant timepieces to sports watches. For more information, visit IWC.com

Last month, a grand jury indicted OpenSea's former head of product in what amounts to the first insider trading enforcement in crypto. Nathaniel Chastain allegedly purchased and sold non-fungible tokens (NFTs) he knew would be listed on OpenSea's homepage at a considerable profit. This alleged activity looks a lot like front running or insider trading, in which someone profits off of non-public information.But insider trading is a securities violation, and NFTs are not currently classified as securities. For that reason, the Department of Justice is arguing a creative case theory that doesn't include securities violations. Instead, the DOJ is seeking to stick Chastain with wire fraud and money laundering charges. In this month's episode of Policy Scoop, Aislinn Keely sits down with Ian McGinley, former co-chief of the complex frauds and cybercrime unit in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) and current partner at Akin Gump’s white-collar defense and government investigations practice, to take a closer look at the case. McGinley breaks down: Implications for the enforcement of insider trading in crypto What wire fraud means in this context and how it's been used in the past How the DOJ's case theory could be used in future enforcements Episode 62 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Aislinn Keely, Policy Reporter.Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblockcrypto.com.This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Chainalysis & IWC SchaffhausenAbout ChainalysisChainalysis is the leading blockchain data platform. We provide data, software, services, and research to government agencies, exchanges, financial institutions, and insurance and cybersecurity companies in over 60 countries. Backed by Accel, Addition, Benchmark, Coatue, Paradigm, Ribbit, and other leading firms in venture capital, Chainalysis builds trust in blockchains to promote more financial freedom with less risk. For more information, visit www.chainalysis.com.About IWC SchaffhausenIWC Schaffhausen is a Swiss luxury watch manufacturer based in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. Known for its unique engineering approach to watchmaking, IWC combines the best of human craftsmanship and creativity with cutting-edge technology and processes. With collections like the Portugieser and the Pilot’s Watches, the brand covers the whole spectrum from elegant timepieces to sports watches. For more information, visit IWC.com

With bitcoin’s market cap hovering around $380 billion — down from over $1.25 trillion last November — lately much attention has been paid to bitcoin’s price action in the mainstream media.Although headlines often focus on bitcoin’s economic component, they are missing the most important aspect of the technology, according to Darin Feinstein, founder of bitcoin mining company Core Scientific. According to Feinstein, “The root of what this technology is, it's a new accounting technology — that's the base.”In a new episode of The Scoop, Feinstein explains the significance of the technology underlying the bitcoin blockchain, and why he thinks it represents the first innovation in the field of accounting in over 700 years.Feinstein says his background in accounting helped him see bitcoin’s potential back in 2011,“I read somewhere about the immutability of the ledger, and as an accountant, it caught my eye. Then I said, ‘That's impossible, there's no such thing as an immutable ledger,' — that's the holy grail of accounting.”The ledger is the technology responsible for fundamentally organizing society, he says.“There's nothing more important to your life, in terms of how you function every day, then all of the ledgers that exist that people rely on to know where you are, and what you're doing, and what you own.”After spending months researching bitcoin, Feinstein concluded that not only is it an immutable ledger, but one that removes human risk from the equation:“It disrupts the world because you now have a permanent accounting ledger that nobody can manipulate, you can't commit fraud on it, you can't alter it, you can't claim human error — the records are the records. It's the first time in human history you have truth on-chain ever.”Episode 61 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Darin Feinstein, founder of Core Scientific.Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblockcrypto.com.This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Chainalysis & IWC SchaffhausenAbout ChainalysisChainalysis is the leading blockchain data platform. We provide data, software, services, and research to government agencies, exchanges, financial institutions, and insurance and cybersecurity companies in over 60 countries. Backed by Accel, Addition, Benchmark, Coatue, Paradigm, Ribbit, and other leading firms in venture capital, Chainalysis builds trust in blockchains to promote more financial freedom with less risk. For more information, visit www.chainalysis.com.About IWC SchaffhausenIWC Schaffhausen is a Swiss luxury watch manufacturer based in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. Known for its unique engineering approach to watchmaking, IWC combines the best of human craftsmanship and creativity with cutting-edge technology and processes. With collections like the Portugieser and the Pilot’s Watches, the brand covers the whole spectrum from elegant timepieces to sports watches. For more information, visit IWC.com

Many Web3 platforms require users to connect their crypto wallets before engaging with the platform in any meaningful way.Consequently, the Web3 experience on mobile devices is tedious at best, given current devices are not designed with such functionalities in mind.Solana Mobile — a subsidiary of the development team behind Solana — hopes to address the difficulties that surround the Web3 mobile user experience with its new Android phone called ‘Saga,’ which is slated for release in early 2023. Last week, Solana Labs co-founder and CEO Anatoly Yakovenko announced the new mobile device, which will run a ‘Solana Mobile Stack’ (SMS) operating system and will feature a marketplace for decentralized Web3 applications.In this episode of The Scoop, Anatoly Yakovenko said he believes Saga’s early success will be linked to its ability to significantly enhance the mobile crypto user experience:“The theory is that crypto users might be crazy enough to switch from iOS to Android because of crypto. It might be so important to have that experience, that they're willing to change their habits.”If Solana Mobile is successfully able to prove there is consumer demand for crypto-forward mobile products, Yakovenko believes it will inspire major tech companies to integrate crypto infrastructure into their own mobile devices moving forward:“You need Google and Apple to do it, but they're not going to do it until there is proven demand that people need it — and so somebody has to kind of make that leap…”Episode 60 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded live at The Block headquarters in New York with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder and CEO of Solana Labs.Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblockcrypto.com.This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Chainalysis & IWC SchaffhausenAbout ChainalysisChainalysis is the leading blockchain data platform. We provide data, software, services, and research to government agencies, exchanges, financial institutions, and insurance and cybersecurity companies in over 60 countries. Backed by Accel, Addition, Benchmark, Coatue, Paradigm, Ribbit, and other leading firms in venture capital, Chainalysis builds trust in blockchains to promote more financial freedom with less risk. For more information, visit www.chainalysis.com.About IWC SchaffhausenIWC Schaffhausen is a Swiss luxury watch manufacturer based in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. Known for its unique engineering approach to watchmaking, IWC combines the best of human craftsmanship and creativity with cutting-edge technology and processes. With collections like the Portugieser and the Pilot’s Watches, the brand covers the whole spectrum from elegant timepieces to sports watches. For more information, visit IWC.com

Web3 can be daunting for new users and brands looking to enter the space.But MoonPay — the crypto payment infrastructure company that raised $555 million at a valuation of $3.4 billion just last year — has spent the last few months building out a suite of NFT related products in an attempt to simplify the process of introducing new users to Web3.So far this year, MoonPay has enabled NFT purchases via credit cards, built out its white-glove NFT concierge service for celebrities, and launched an NFT minting service aimed at brands and content creators.In this episode of The Scoop recorded live at the NFT.NYC conference, MoonPay co-founder and CEO Ivan Soto-Wright sits down with host Frank Chaparro to discuss the inroads MoonPay has made into the burgeoning NFT industry, and to explain some of the ways he envisions the space evolving over the coming months.One potential use case for NFTs that Soto-Wright is excited about is their potential to act as redeemable tokens for real-world items. According to Soto-Wright:“‘Phygital’ — or ‘digital twinning’ — is the idea that you can take something that exists physically and create a digital pair of that as an NFT, and then you can hold on to that and redeem it for the physical…”In addition to helping brands combat counterfeiting, Soto-Wright explains how brands could use ‘phygital’ items to pitch products directly to consumers:“Let's say Gucci has a special line of shoes that they want to sell on their website, and maybe the shoes haven't actually been released yet — they could release them digitally and they could actually start to engage with the audience and see whether there's actually demand for that asset before it actually is created.”Big brands are part of the audience MoonPay hopes to attract with its new HyperMint NFT utility service, announced at the start of NFT.NYC last week, which allows brands and creators to mint millions of NFTs at a time.Episode 59 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded live at NFT.NYC with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Ivan Soto-Wright, co-founder and CEO of MoonPay.Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblockcrypto.com.This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Fireblocks, Coinbase Prime & Cross RiverFireblocks is an enterprise-grade platform delivering a secure infrastructure for moving, storing, and issuing digital assets. Fireblocks enables exchanges, lending desks, custodians, banks, trading desks, and hedge funds to securely scale digital asset operations through the Fireblocks Network and MPC-based Wallet Infrastructure. Fireblocks serves over 725 financial institutions, has secured the transfer of over $1.5 trillion in digital assets, and has a unique insurance policy that covers assets in storage & transit. For more information, please visit www.fireblocks.com.About Coinbase PrimeCoinbase Prime is an integrated solution that provides institutional investors with an advanced trading platform, secure custody, and prime services to manage all their crypto assets in one place. Coinbase Prime fully integrates crypto trading and custody on a single platform, and gives clients the best all-in pricing in their network using their proprietary Smart Order Router and algorithmic execution. For more information, visit www.coinbase.com/prime.About Cross RiverCross River is powering today’s most innovative crypto companies, with banking and payments solutions you can rely on, including fiat on/off ramp solutions. Whether you are a crypto exchange, NFT marketplace, or wallet, Cross River’s API-based, all-in-one platform enables banking as a service, ACH & wire transfers, push-to-card disbursements, real-time payments, and virtual accounts and subledgers. Request your fiat on/off ramp solution now at crossriver.com/crypto. 

 One biotech startup is trying to use blockchain technology to revolutionize the way potential treatments for rare diseases are identified for funding and development.According to Vibe Bio CEO Alok Tayi:“Vibe is a community of patients, scientists and partners that help identify promising treatments for rare diseases and other overlooked diseases, and fund them in innovative ways.”In this episode of The Scoop, Tayi shares his vision for how Vibe Bio aims to disrupt the centralized control of big pharma, and explains why a decentralized autonomous organization (or ‘DAO’) is the optimal solution for organizing the members of the Vibe community.According to Tayi, the biology of rare diseases is often understood, but biotech companies do not have enough incentive to fund research given the limited financial upside. As Tayi notes:“There actually ends up being a myriad of different candidate medicines with promise that are sitting on shelves today, but simply lack the capital and the focus to be able to develop them.”This is the problem Tayi hopes to address through Vibe Bio. By using a DAO structure, Vibe Bio is able to put forward governance proposals to identify promising treatment options. $VIBE token holders can then vote on which treatments will get funded via the proceeds of the DAO's token sale.As Tayi explains, this decentralized approach empowers patients who would otherwise be unable to get assistance from centralized biotech companies:“When you start to move away from a traditional sort of financing model to one that's community led, patients can now be in the driver's seat of deciding what medicines to pursue, what disease areas we should try to treat, not profit or politics.”Earlier this week, Vibe announced it received $12 million in a funding round led by Initialized Capital, which also included participation from prominent angel investors Naval Ravikant and Balaji Srinivasan, as well as 6th Man Ventures — the venture firm helmed by The Block Co-Founder Mike Dudas — amongst others.Episode 58 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Alok Tayi, Co-Founder & CEO of Vibe Bio.Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblockcrypto.com.This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Fireblocks, Coinbase Prime & Cross RiverFireblocks is an enterprise-grade platform delivering a secure infrastructure for moving, storing, and issuing digital assets. Fireblocks enables exchanges, lending desks, custodians, banks, trading desks, and hedge funds to securely scale digital asset operations through the Fireblocks Network and MPC-based Wallet Infrastructure. Fireblocks serves over 725 financial institutions, has secured the transfer of over $1.5 trillion in digital assets, and has a unique insurance policy that covers assets in storage & transit. For more information, please visit www.fireblocks.com.About Coinbase PrimeCoinbase Prime is an integrated solution that provides institutional investors with an advanced trading platform, secure custody, and prime services to manage all their crypto assets in one place. Coinbase Prime fully integrates crypto trading and custody on a single platform, and gives clients the best all-in pricing in their network using their proprietary Smart Order Router and algorithmic execution. For more information, visit www.coinbase.com/prime.About Cross RiverCross River is powering today’s most innovative crypto companies, with banking and payments solutions you can rely on, including fiat on/off ramp solutions. Whether you are a crypto exchange, NFT marketplace, or wallet, Cross River’s API-based, all-in-one platform enables banking as a service, ACH & wire transfers, push-to-card disbursements, real-time payments, and virtual accounts and subledgers. Request your fiat on/off ramp solution now at crossriver.com/crypto.

Earlier this week, the apparent insolvency of Three Arrows Capital (or '3AC' for short) caught many in the crypto world by surprise, including Wintermute CEO Evgeny Gaevoy who commented:“Everyone kind of assumed those guys just made billions over the years… but now it seems like we were just all horribly wrong.”In this episode of The Scoop, Evgeny Gaevoy joins The Block’s Frank Chaparro and guest co-host Larry Cermak to analyze the fallout from the 3AC situation, and to explain the wide-scale deleveraging that is occurring in the crypto markets.According to Cermak, not only was 3AC liquidated by top-tier exchanges, but the firm has outstanding debts with multiple counterparties,“The impact isn't completely clear when it comes to size… the number I've heard is roughly around $1.5 to $2.5 billion in terms of actual debt that 3AC has — and in terms of the firms affected, it’s almost everyone.”While the extent of 3AC’s obligations is unclear, Voyager Digital has publicly announced its intent to pursue legal action against 3AC, if the firm defaults on a loan worth over $650 million. Given the widespread uncertainty regarding balance sheets in the wake of 3AC’s insolvency, crypto lenders have begun recalling loans to large counterparties, including Gaevoy’s Wintermute.“[Wintermute] basically got recalled pretty much on all open loans that we had with all the lenders,” Gaevoy said, “our balance sheet decreased more than half basically.”As Gaevoy explains, recalling loans allows crypto lenders to check counterparties for solvency:“The reason is everyone just wants to see who is solvent in this market. That’s basically the best way to check it, because once you recall all the loans and you give all the firms like one or two weeks… you probably will see some of them fail and collapse and that's it.”Episode 57 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Larry Cermak, and Evgeny Gaevoy, CEO of Wintermute.Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblockcrypto.com.This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Fireblocks, Coinbase Prime & Cross RiverFireblocks is an enterprise-grade platform delivering a secure infrastructure for moving, storing, and issuing digital assets. Fireblocks enables exchanges, lending desks, custodians, banks, trading desks, and hedge funds to securely scale digital asset operations through the Fireblocks Network and MPC-based Wallet Infrastructure. Fireblocks serves over 725 financial institutions, has secured the transfer of over $1.5 trillion in digital assets, and has a unique insurance policy that covers assets in storage & transit. For more information, please visit www.fireblocks.com.About Coinbase PrimeCoinbase Prime is an integrated solution that provides institutional investors with an advanced trading platform, secure custody, and prime services to manage all their crypto assets in one place. Coinbase Prime fully integrates crypto trading and custody on a single platform, and gives clients the best all-in pricing in their network using their proprietary Smart Order Router and algorithmic execution. For more information, visit www.coinbase.com/prime.About Cross RiverCross River is powering today’s most innovative crypto companies, with banking and payments solutions you can rely on, including fiat on/off ramp solutions. Whether you are a crypto exchange, NFT marketplace, or wallet, Cross River’s API-based, all-in-one platform enables banking as a service, ACH & wire transfers, push-to-card disbursements, real-time payments, and virtual accounts and subledgers. Request your fiat on/off ramp solution now at crossriver.com/crypto.

Magic Eden, Solana’s largest NFT marketplace, is eyeing an ambitious growth plan after raising a $130 million funding round co-led by Greylock and Electric Capital.While the broader crypto market struggles to find its footing, Magic Eden is coming off its best month ever, with just over 5 million SOL in volume transacted during May.In this episode of The Scoop, Magic Eden co-founder and COO Zhuoxun 'Zedd' Yin, talks through the project’s funding efforts and unpacks some of the reasons why he believes Magic Eden has room to grow into more than just an NFT marketplace.As Zedd explains during the interview, both Magic Eden’s founders and its investors share a broad time horizon for the future:“I think despite the ridiculous and amazing traction that I think we've had in the first nine months, it's still very early days for us and we have a lot more we want to build — and I think hopefully that plan and that outlook resonated with a lot of investors. And for us, we were lucky to be able to bring on the partners that we were really excited about.”Instead of limiting itself to running a marketplace, Magic Eden hopes to establish itself as a hub for all NFT-related activity.According to Zedd:“We would love to be the place where there's actually many layers on top of the marketplace — so not only is this the place where you perform the execution of the transaction, but really all of the discovery, all of the community based interaction, all the fun social elements that come with NFTs is also happened on Magic Eden.”Magic Eden also plans to branch out beyond the Solana blockchain"As, you know... very intentional decision to start on Solana. But I really do think that if developers and users are going to be in other ecosystems, it's almost like if you're a traditional company starting in Australia. But then there's a lot of users in New Zealand or like whatever, like Singapore. You want to be there too. Right?"Episode 56 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded in-person with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Magic Eden Co-Founder & COO, Zedd.Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblockcrypto.com.This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Fireblocks, Coinbase Prime & Cross RiverFireblocks is an enterprise-grade platform delivering a secure infrastructure for moving, storing, and issuing digital assets. Fireblocks enables exchanges, lending desks, custodians, banks, trading desks, and hedge funds to securely scale digital asset operations through the Fireblocks Network and MPC-based Wallet Infrastructure. Fireblocks serves over 725 financial institutions, has secured the transfer of over $1.5 trillion in digital assets, and has a unique insurance policy that covers assets in storage & transit. For more information, please visit www.fireblocks.com.About Coinbase PrimeCoinbase Prime is an integrated solution that provides institutional investors with an advanced trading platform, secure custody, and prime services to manage all their crypto assets in one place. Coinbase Prime fully integrates crypto trading and custody on a single platform, and gives clients the best all-in pricing in their network using their proprietary Smart Order Router and algorithmic execution. For more information, visit www.coinbase.com/prime.About Cross RiverCross River is powering today’s most innovative crypto companies, with banking and payments solutions you can rely on, including fiat on/off ramp solutions. Whether you are a crypto exchange, NFT marketplace, or wallet, Cross River’s API-based, all-in-one platform enables banking as a service, ACH & wire transfers, push-to-card disbursements, real-time payments, and virtual accounts and subledgers. Request your fiat on/off ramp solution now at crossriver.com/crypto.

This week approximately 15,000 non-fungible token (NFT) enthusiasts from around the world descend on New York City for the fourth annual NFT.NYC conference, which features more than 1,500 speakers over four days.In this episode of The Scoop, NFT.NYC conference founders Jodee Rich and Cameron Bale sit down with host Frank Chaparro to share details of the upcoming conference and its origins — and to analyze the boom and cultural adoption that NFTs have witnessed over the last few years.As Jodee Rich explains during the show, although he has worked with multiple forms of emerging technologies over the years, he has never seen a new technology embraced as readily as NFTs have been:“I was very early in the social media boom, very early in telephony, mobile telephony, very, very early in microcomputers… I've never seen a particular technology being adopted so quickly — and it's way beyond trading, which is the very interesting thing.”As data from The Block shows, NFT sales have grown exponentially over the last two years.For this year’s NFT.NYC, the organizers specially partnered with NFT intelligence platform Mnemonic to analyze the crypto wallet addresses provided by attendees. As Cameron Bale explains, Mnemonic’s findings showed that most attendees acquired their first NFT within the last two years:“Something super interesting is that 68% of our attendees got their first NFT in 2021 and 22% of them got their first NFT in 2022, and that's from a survey of 15,000 attendees.”Episode 55 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and NFT.NYC Founders Jodee Rich and Cameron Bale.Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblockcrypto.comThis episode is brought to you by our sponsors Fireblocks, Coinbase Prime & Cross RiverFireblocks is an enterprise-grade platform delivering a secure infrastructure for moving, storing, and issuing digital assets. Fireblocks enables exchanges, lending desks, custodians, banks, trading desks, and hedge funds to securely scale digital asset operations through the Fireblocks Network and MPC-based Wallet Infrastructure. Fireblocks serves over 725 financial institutions, has secured the transfer of over $1.5 trillion in digital assets, and has a unique insurance policy that covers assets in storage & transit. For more information, please visit www.fireblocks.com.About Coinbase PrimeCoinbase Prime is an integrated solution that provides institutional investors with an advanced trading platform, secure custody, and prime services to manage all their crypto assets in one place. Coinbase Prime fully integrates crypto trading and custody on a single platform, and gives clients the best all-in pricing in their network using their proprietary Smart Order Router and algorithmic execution. For more information, visit www.coinbase.com/prime.About Cross RiverCross River is powering today’s most innovative crypto companies, with banking and payments solutions you can rely on, including fiat on/off ramp solutions. Whether you are a crypto exchange, NFT marketplace, or wallet, Cross River’s API-based, all-in-one platform enables banking as a service, ACH & wire transfers, push-to-card disbursements, real-time payments, and virtual accounts and subledgers. Request your fiat on/off ramp solution now at crossriver.com/crypto.